A Simple Recipe to Create Smoked Salmon at Home

As most of our followers have a keen interest in food and many are accomplished cooks, I hope the Chefs of English Lakes can help inspire you to be even more creative and try new recipe ideas.

When we run our smoking courses in conjunction with Jo and Georgina from Smoky Jo’s, the hot Smoked Salmon is always one of the first things our ‘students’ get to taste. A great introduction to smoking food for the first time which can be done without having to buy expensive equipment; just use an old biscuit tin or a deep metal tray with a cooling rack covered with tin foil. We use a Cameron stove top smoker which can easily be purchased from good garden centres or online. It is very important that the sawdust you use for smoking food does not contain any oil that may have come from a chainsaw. Oak is one of the most popular sawdust’s used for smoking.

Method

In a jug combine the ingredients for the brine and stir until all of the salt has been dissolved

Put the Salmon in a plastic container then cover with the brine and refrigerate for 2 hours

Meanwhile, for the sweet and sour red onions; boil the sugar and vinegar for 10 -15 minutes until it becomes a syrupy consistency, peel and finely slice the onions, then add them and boil for a further 5 minutes

Remove the onions from the heat, allow to cool and refrigerate.

For the chive crème fraîche; simply combine the ingredients and then refrigerate

When the 2 hours has passed, take the Salmon out of the brine and rinse under cold water, we are now ready to smoke the Salmon

Sprinkle a handful of sawdust into the bottom of your tin (or whatever you have decided to cook your Salmon in). Place the Salmon onto a cooling tray, then carefully place into the tin on the sawdust – the Salmon should be about 1 inch above the thin layer of sawdust. Cover with a tight fitting lid or tin foil and cook on a hob over a high heat for about 5-8 minutes

In the meantime divide the onions onto the plates and dress the salad leaves

Place the cooked Salmon onto the onions, spoon a quenelle of crème fraîche onto the Salmon then garnish with the salad

Dress the salad with the oil lemon juice and season

Left to Right: Sawdust in roast tin, Salmon on a raised rack, Salmon smoking on the hob.

Written by: +Tina Taylor on behalf of Marc Sanders, Head Chef at The Wild Boar Grill & Smokehouse